Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/47

 monarch’s artistic sense led him not only to adorn his house with a number of works of antique art, but also to study German medieval art, which he did to good effect. To him Munich owes the acquisition of the famous Rhenish collection of the Boisserée brothers. The king also worked with great zeal for the care of monuments, and the cathedrals of Spires and Cologne enjoyed his special care. He was also an unfailing supporter of contemporary painting, in so far as it responded to his romantic tendencies, and he gave a fresh impulse to the arts of working in metal and glass. As visible signs of his permanent services to art Munich possesses the Walhalla, the Glyptothek, the two Pinakotheken, the Odeon, the University, and many other magnificent buildings both sacred and profane. The rôle which the Bavarian capital now plays as the leading art centre of Germany would have been an impossibility without the splendid munificence of Louis I.

He died on the 28th of February 1868 at Nice, and on the 9th of March was buried in Munich, amid demonstrations of great popular feeling.

The chief part of Louis’s records is contained in seven sealed chests in the archives of his family, and by the provisions of his will these were not to be opened till the year 1918. These records contain an extraordinarily large and valuable mass of historical material, including, as one item, 246 volumes of the king’s diary.

.—Of the numerous pamphlets, especially of the years 1846–1848, we need only mention here: P. Erdmann, Lola Montez und die Jesuiten (1847); Geheimbericht über Bayern (1847), published by Fowmier in Deutsche Revue, vol. 27. See also F. v. Ritter, Beiträge zur Regierungsgeschichte König Ludwigs I. (1825–1826) (2 vols., 1853–1855); Sepp, Ludwig I. Augustus, König von Bayern und das Zeitalter der Wiedergeburt der Künste (1869; 2nd ed., 1903); Ottokar Lorenz, Drei Bücher Geschichte (1876; 2nd ed., 1879); K. Th. v. Heigel, Ludwig I. (1872; 2nd ed., 1888); “Ludwig I. und Martin Wagner,” Neue historische Vorträge (1883); “Ludwig I.,” Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (1884); “Ludwig I. als Freund der Geschichte” and “Kronprinz Ludwig in den Feldzügen von 1807 und 1809,” in Historische Vorträge und Studien (1887); Die Verlegung der Universität nach München, Rektoratsrede (1887); “Ludwig I. und die Münchener Hochschule,” Quellen und Abhandlungen zur Geschichte Bayerns, n.s. (1890); “Ludwig I. als Erzieher seines Volkes,” ib.; Reidelbach, Ludwig I. und seine Kunstschöpfungen (1887; 2nd ed., 1888); L. Trose, Ludwig I. in seinen Briefen an seinen Sohn, den König Otto von Griechenland (1891); L. v. Kobell, Unter den vier ersten Königen Bayerns (1894); A. Fournier, “Aus den Tagen der Lola Montez,” Neue Deutsche Rundschau (1901); M. Doeberé, “Ludwig I. und die deutsche Frage,” Festgabe für Heigel (1903); E. Füchs, Lola Montez in der Karrikatüre (1904); L. Brunner, Nürnberg 1848–1849 (1907).

LOUIS II., king of Bavaria (1845–1886), son of his predecessor Maximilian II. and his wife Maria, daughter of Prince William of Prussia, was born at Nymphenburg on the 25th of August 1845. Together with his brother Otto, three years younger than himself, Louis received, in accordance with the wishes of his learned father, a simple and serious education modelled on that of the German Gymnasien, of which the classical languages are the chief feature. Of modern languages the crown prince learnt only French, of which he remained fond all his life. The practical value of the prince’s training was small. It was not till he was eighteen years old that he received his first pocket-money, and at that age he had no ideas about money and its value. Military instruction, physical exercises and sport, in spite of the crown prince’s strong physique, received little attention. Thus Louis did not come enough into contact with young men of his own age, and consequently soon developed a taste for solitude, which was found at an early age to be combined with the romantic tendencies and musical and theatrical tastes traditional in his family.

Louis succeeded to the throne on the 10th of March 1864, at the age of eighteen. The early years of his reign were marked by a series of most serious political defeats for Bavaria. In the Schleswig-Holstein question, though he was opposed to Prussia and a friend of Duke Frederick VIII. of Augustenburg, he did not command the material forces necessary effectively to resist the powerful policy of Bismarck. Again, in the war of 1866, Louis and his minister von der Pfordten took the side of Austria, and at the conclusion of peace (August 22) Bavaria had, in addition to the surrender of certain small portions of her territory, to agree to the foundation of the North German Confederation under the leadership of Prussia. The king’s Bavarian patriotism, one of the few steadfast ideas underlying his policy, was deeply wounded by these occurrences, but he was face to face with the inevitable, and on the 10th of August wrote a letter of reconciliation to King William of Prussia. The defeat of Bavaria in 1866 showed clearly the necessity for a reform of the army. Under the new Liberal ministry of Hohenlohe (December 29, 1866—February 13, 1870) and under Prauckh as minister of war, a series of reforms were carried through which prepared for the victories of 1870. As regards his ecclesiastical policy, though Louis remained personally true to the Catholic Church, he strove for a greater independence of the Vatican. He maintained friendly relations with Ignaz von Döllinger, the leader of the more liberal Catholics who opposed the definition of papal infallibility, but without extending his protection to the anti-Roman movement of the Old Catholics. In spite of this the Old Bavarian opposition was so aroused by the Liberalism of the Hohenlohe ministry that at the beginning of 1870 Louis had to form a more Conservative cabinet under Count Bray-Steinburg. On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War he at once took the side of Prussia, and gave orders for mobilization. In 1871 it was he who offered the imperial crown to the king of Prussia; but this was not done on his own initiative. Bismarck not only determined the king of Bavaria to take the decisive step which put an end to a serious diplomatic crisis, but actually drafted the letter to King William which Louis copied and despatched without changing a word. Louis placed very few difficulties in the way of the new German Empire under the leadership of Prussia, though his Bavarian particularism remained unchanged.

Though up till the beginning of the year 1880 he did not cease to give some attention to state affairs, the king’s interests lay in quite other spheres. His personal idiosyncrasies had, in fact, developed meanwhile in a most unhappy direction. His enthusiasm for all that is beautiful soon led him into dangerous bypaths. It found its most innocent expression in the earliest years of his reign when he formed an intimate friendship with Richard Wagner, whom from May 1864 to December 1865 he had constantly in his company. Louis was entirely possessed by the soaring ideas of the master, and was energetic in their realization. He not only established Wagner’s material position at the moment by paying 18,000 gulden of debts for him and granting him a yearly income of 4000 gulden (afterwards increased to 8000), but he also proceeded to realize the ambitious artistic plans of the master. A series of brilliant model performances of the Wagnerian music-dramas was instituted in Munich under the personal patronage of the king, and when the further plan of erecting a great festival theatre in Munich for the performance of Wagner’s “music of the future” broke down in the face of the passive resistance of the local circles interested, the royal enthusiast conceived the idea of building at Bayreuth, according to Wagner’s new principles, a theatre worthy of the music-dramas. For a time Louis was entirely under Wagner’s influence, the fantastic tendencies of whose art cast a spell over him, and there is extant a series of emotional letters of the king to Wagner. Wagner, on the whole, used his influence in artistic and not in political affairs. In spite of this the opposition to him became permanent. Public opinion in Bavaria for the most part turned against him. He was attacked for his foreign origin, his extravagance, his intrigues, his artistic utopias, and last but by no means least, for his unwholesome influence over the king. Louis in the end was compelled to give him up. But the relations between king and artist were by no means at an end. In face of the war which was imminent in 1866, and in the midst of the preparation for war, the king hastened in May to Triebschen, near Lucerne,